Monday, June 9, 2008

More Korean Questions

Movie theaters are just barely popular here in Korea, which astounds me.

The closest movie theater is in a city of 300,000, forty-five minutes away. And, in that city, they only have four cinemas. Even Macomb had two.

So I guess the question comes in two parts. The first is how often do you go to the theater, how often do you rent movies, and how often do you download? When I was in Seattle, I would go see an art film about once every other week, rent two or three movies every two weeks, and download probably around four movies a week.

The second part is how well do you like the movie theater as compared to watching it on a TV or a computer? Personally, I can't stand watching it on a computer screen. The difference between whether I rent a movie or whether I see it in the theater is how much the cinema experience impacts the movie. For instance, horror movies are always better in the theater, and so are action movies. Actually, I believe all movies are better in the theater, but those two genres lose the most when converted to other formats.

The second question I have is about beef. In Korea, the most important political debate for the past month has been over the importing of American beef. To put it simply, they are pissed about it. Koreans are more angry at their president for wanting to bring American beef into the country than we were when our President started a war in Iraq until false pretenses. It confuses the hell out of me, because the problem that they have is not the danger to Korean cow farmers or national pride, but instead it's health, specifically, the danger of mad cow diasese.

So the question is somewhat loaded. Has anyone ever, ever thought about American beef as being dangerous? This is the first I've heard about it.